I’m completely new to blogging and such, so this isn’t exactly the best writing. Bear with me as I get more experienced and can make these stories more interesting (though theres not really many ways I can make an airport delay sound interesting)
Well, I finally got to Madrid, even though it was a lot later than I planned. The trip from Tallahassee to Madrid was only supposed to take 16 hours, and that was including the 6 hours of time difference. It ended up taking almost 40, after weather and delays messed everything up. The flight was supposed to get into Atlanta at 4:30, but it ended up getting diverted to Augusta for 3 hours after circling Atlanta for an hour. By the time I got to Atlanta, it was 10:30, and my flight to Madrid was long gone. I ended up having to spend the night in Atlanta airport, then fly to JFK early in the morning and spend the day there. Finally, I got on a flight to Madrid and arrived at 8 in the morning. After a bit more difficulty in finding the ride to my place, I finally got in the car to head towards the actual city. Caroline and I rode with the guy from Madrid Easy, where he got our keys, got us some good breakfast, and got me into my apartment.
Since Madrid is a huge city, I was expecting the apartment to be ridiculously small, Luckily, this apparently isn’t true. My room is bigger than either of the rooms I stayed in the past two years at Gainesville Place and the Alamo, and I get my own bathroom. After unpacking some, exhaustion took over, and I passed out for a few hours. When I woke up, I got to meeting the new roommates. There’s Christine and Jackie, who are both on the UF program with me. Cassandra and Jennifer are also on the program, but they’re only here for a few days. There’s also a guy who’s actually from Spain, Tomas, who’s pretty cool as well.
After talking with the roommates for a bit, me, Christine, and Jackie went out to discover where the university is. On the way, we encountered our first obstacle: the metro. I thought I’d be pretty familiar with the metro after my trip to Paris, but apparently I forgot completely how it works. We found the line that we needed to take, and sat at the platform waiting for it. A few trains passed by, but they were for a different number, so we just waited some more. It took us 20 minutes for us to realize that there might be more than one platform, and out train was probably going to be there. After this revelation, we easily got on the right track, and headed towards Nebrija. We discovered that the “8 minute walk” they advertised was closer to 15-20 minutes, meaning that the whole trip could take almost 45 minutes from door to door. On the walk back we got some fantastic noms from a local store for less than 3 euros, and headed back to the apartment to get ready for dinner, which in Spain means ready by 9:30.
